


Second Mistake Was the Worst

by AliNear



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: BAMF Klaus Hargreeves, Death, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus lost people okay, M/M, Time Travel, a little gore i guess, mentions of Vietnam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-06 05:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21221357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliNear/pseuds/AliNear
Summary: The Handler never had all the details, but well in her defense no one spoke about the last time.Her first mistake she could have recovered from.The second one was her undoing.





	Second Mistake Was the Worst

Five comes to her, older than thirteen but younger than his sixty some years alive. He leans against the desk as if the passed five years of on and off battles, of time jumps, and all out wars his family has fought against the commission hasn’t happened. He smirks at her, boyish smile with dark calculating eyes as he looks out her window.

“You’ve lost.” He notes, as if it was obvious.

“How so?” she questioned, her painted red lips stretching into her own disarming smile as she watched her companion.

“Three reasons, or rather two.” He holds up his hand, flashing her the peace sign mockingly, “You lost when you underestimated my family, if there is one thing, we all share its stubbornness. It’s been five years, fifty-nine timelines, and we’re just getting started.” He teeth glitter in the light, canine sharp and ready for weakness.

“Secondly, and really your biggest error, you’ve succeeded where only one other person has.”

She waited a moment, hands caressing her handgun as she waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t. instead his head tilts back and he laughs, looking at her with bright eyes.

“What? Where was my error?” she finally snaps after another few minutes of him just laughing.

“My brother,” he announces suddenly, “Forgives a lot, Luther strangling him, Allison ignoring him, Vanya turning him away.” He lists, ticking them off his fingers absently, “He’s hated dad but was never truly angry at him, just deeply sad about the entire thing.” Five shrugs, “But boy, is he pissed off.”

She snorts at his rambling, wondering if she should warn her guards, for surely this was just a distraction.

“You see Klaus has only ever been truly, righteously angry once before, do you know when that was?”

“No,” she answers dryly, “But I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“Ben’s death, I’m not sure you even have the details of what happened after the Horror was taken out on that mission.”

She doesn’t, any person sent to spy during those few hours die and equipment short circuits, a temporal anomaly they had decided all those years ago, before the first re-write by five, let alone the fifty other re-writes. She tells him none of this.

“Klaus is protective of what is his. HIS family.” He emphasizes, watching her silently as if waiting for her to realize her big mistake, but she just watches.

He pushes himself off the desk, sauntering over to her private collection hands trailing off guns and explosives before stopping at the one she had shown him so long ago. He changes the topic again, idle asking out of the blue.

“Vietnam, 1968, right?”

“Correct.”

“Was it one of the one’s you used to kill off the 173rd Airborne Brigade?”

She hums, eyes focusing on his pale fingers that were playing with the stick.

“They to good? It’s rare for the commission to take out a whole team.” He noted, tossing it up and catching.

“It was calculated if not stop they’d change the way the war was suppose to play out,” she tell him, stepping around her desk to snatch the grenade out of the air and away from Five, “Killing one or a few would just call for vengeance in the group, they were unusually close for soldiers.”

Five nodded, “So, kill the lot of them, all in one go.”

“It had to be.” She confirms, placing the grenade down, “What does this have to do with my suppose error?”

Five reaches forward, ignoring her hand on her gun and the stiffness of her body as he pats her shoulder.

“You were right you know,” he opens her door and noise floods in.

Screaming, shrill and shrieking consume the halls, smoke billows into the room flooding the ceiling as the light of fire could be seen eating away at the building. A shade, glowing blue darted down the hall, dressed in army gear and shouting, a group of other similarly dressed men followed shortly after, continuing their way into the burning building. Dot stumbles in, blood pouring from her mouth and onto her blue blouse as she fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face as she reached for the Handler’s heels.

“If you left one alive, they would come for vengeance.” Five leans back, facing the door as a tall lanky man in an army green vest came in, eyes aglow and thin veins of blue lighting up under his skin.

“Here you go Klaus,” Five tells him, gesturing over at her, “All for you.”

Shakily she raised her gun, watching as he stepped closer and closer. His head tilted out of the way, blowing his hair up as if swept by a breeze. She fired again. This time the bullet stopped the tip touching his nose as he swatted it down like a fly.

“Ah, and Handler, you second mistake? If you couldn’t tell. Was pissing off my brother.”

Five walked out the door, closing it just as she shrieked. He walked through the chaos calmly, stepping over bodies and pivoting around the ghost, nodding head as he passed the soldiers as he made his way out of the building and towards their waiting siblings. Sitting innocently on the grass in front of the burning building, Diego handed him a bottle of root-beer as Vanya shifted through their picnic basket, pulling out his sandwich. Shifting to scoot over on the blanket, Allison leaned against Luther as she watched the windows on the second floor blow out. Ben, cocked his head to the side, absently chewing on the warm waffled he had insisted on packing, leaning back before poking Five in the side. The siblings sat silently for a long while, Five devouring his sandwich and happily munching on the second on Vanya handed him.

"So," Ben drawled out, "Whose gonna go get him?"

They eyed each other distrustfully before Allison blurted out "Noes goes!" shooting her hand to press against her nose.

**December 26, 1968**

Klaus pushed, holding in his sobs as he pushed Matt’s body off of him, clawing his way out from under his brother-in-arms. His head peeked out from the cave of bodies, eyes sweeping across the ruined set up, their tents either on fire or shredded, cots twisted in trees and bushes torn apart by the blast. Klaus pulled himself up, out of the pile of bodies, blinking the blood out of his eyes as he took in the bodies.

Matt, who had a daughter waiting at home and who wanted to become a chief. Phil, who had been trying to convince the guys to come visit him and he’d teach everyone how to ride a horse and hog tie a well hog. Chaz, who grunted and moaned but would watch everyone’s back and kept commenting about how he’d teach all them how to grill a mean steak once state side, nothing like the food they ate now.

The trucks were husks and the tree close by had caught fire, raging on and on, setting off grenade that had been flung back and land mines as it swept over the forest.

Bill had wanted to be a teacher, James wanted to go home to his newborn son, Anthony swore he’d write us all into history.

The bodies were bloody and charred, some still burning and other so thin and charred he wasn’t sure who it was. He collected one tag from each of them, counting them out as he said the pray Dave taught him, stumbling over the pronouncing the Hebrew. His face was already streaked with tears when he stumbled onto him. Dave, bloody and pale, with his left leg gone and his side a bright burned red.

“Oh, baby, no baby.” Klaus sobbed, cradling his head close.

He sat with the bodies for a week, waiting for a recognizable US plane or helicopter before sending up the single flair he found. He watched them circle overhead, waiting to see if they would come get his friends and brothers before taking the brief case and disappearing into the ash of the forest. Trembling he brought his hands up to pull Dave’s tag away from the others, kissing it, slinging his rifle and then Dave's over his shoulder he headed into the woods.

The lone survivor of the attack on the 173rd Airborne unit, Sargent Klaus Harris, was seen several more times, popping up at other units and camps to drop off P.O.W or take food before disappearing back into the woods. He is credited with the discovery and destruction of three VietCong camps as well as the retrieval of twenty-five U.S. P.O.W.

He disappeared soon after and many believe him to have been captures and executed. Sargent Klaus Harris’ body has never been recovered but has his name on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. as well as a headstone with his unit in the Arlington cemetery.

Sargent Klaus Harris received many awards for his service during the war, including but not limited to the Purple Heart.


End file.
